The Musings Of Jeff Chandler

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Glogster – You In A Poster

Finally, a somewhat different and unique approach to social networking. Check out Glogster.com Glogster.com lets you network with your friends via posters. These posters can contain graphics, text, images, videos, sound, and wallpapers. You can either select from a number of predefined templates for each section or, you can upload your own video, image or sound. The uploading feature allows you to upload up to 100MB per file. Whoever would upload a 100MB video file to a poster is insane.

No registration to the site is necessary to create a glogster. So, I decided to give it a try to see what I could come up with. I was surprised to see all of the different preset images and frames that were built into this web app. One thing I noticed during my test is that, when you hover over the editing icons, there are no tooltips. This makes me wonder what it is that particular tool or button does and that is not good when you think of usability. Another thing I didn’t like is the constant need to move the main editor window around. It always seemed to get in my way.

This is what the element editor looks like. The arrows represent scaling while the circular arrow represents rotation. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the icons next to the word EDIT are supposed to do. I know for certain though that, the trash can deletes the element from the poster. All of the predefined elements are vector images meaning, they can scale to a very large size while still maintaining quality. If you upload a custom image that is not vectorized and you increase it’s size within Glogster, you will see a drastic decrease in image quality.

After I was finished creating my (Glogster), I clicked on the Save and Publish button. The publish dialog box popped up which gave me the ability to give my (Glog) a title, specify an address for the glog, assign tags, and choose a category. Glogster also gives you the option of making your Glogs public, or private. Thank goodness they have a WTF category because thats precisely the reaction you’ll have when you see this thing.

Once I clicked the publish button, I was greeted with a register page so that I could publish and share my glog to others. Apparently, you don’t need an account to create a glog. However, you need to have an account to publish and share the glog with others which makes sense, considering the social networking aspect of the service. So for this reviews sake, I created an account.

The good news is, if you register an account after you create your glog, it will be accessible as if you created it with a pre existing account. Good move on Glogster’s part.

There is much more involved with Glogster than what I covered, but I wanted to highlight the poster creation part as I think that it’s a pretty cool idea. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a social network that uses a different method of being social. Hopefully, if other social networks are coming down the pike (you just know they are) they will have a way of doing things that is outside of the box. A little ingenuity never hurt anybody.

Oh, and before I let you go, kiss your chances of embedding your Glogster into your blog. I gave it a shot and the damn this is over 900 pixels wide. So, you’ll most likely have to link to your Glogsters instead.

Enough with the review, time to see my WTF poster! Take note Mike. If you create a Glogster, be sure to let me know and send us a link.